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Mike Argento: How many human lives is a dog worth?

MIKE ARGENTO

Updated:
09/12/2013 04:04:34 PM EDT

And now comes news that dogs are trying to kill us.

Well, not really. But they are to blame, sort of, though in some cases, not really, and, at least in South America, they are being killed as a prophylactic measure to prevent them from becoming vectors for homicide, whether they are or not.

Which is a terrible thing.

I think.

This came to my attention via a headline on the online magazine Slate. "How many dog lives is one human life worth?" the headline said.

The correct answer, of course, is it depends on the human. If you're talking about Hitler or Stalin or Jerry Sandusky, every dog everywhere is safe to live a long and fruitful life. If you're talking about Michael Vick, it gets harder to calculate. Do you count the dogs he's already killed or what? I'm guessing not. And if you're talking about someone like Mother Teresa or the Pope, well, again, it gets complicated, but it's probably likely that some dogs won't make it. Maybe just bad dogs.

I should have stopped there, but I had to go ahead and read the story and learn all about a parasitic disease that causes your internal organs to explode - kind of - which is something that could mess up your entire week.

gov/travel/yellowbook/2014/chapter-3-infectious-diseases-related-to-travel/leishmaniasis-visceral">visceral leishmaniasis, and it's as bad as it sounds. Maybe worse.

And as a person who's favorite part of Mr. Bickleman's 11th grade biology class was learning all about the different things that could kill you in awful and disgusting ways, this kind of stuff interests me. (Did you know that the longest tapeworm taken out of a human was 37 feet long and doctors removed it through the woman's mouth?) A lot of people see a monkey and think, "Hey, a monkey." I think, "Ebola."

Visceral leishmaniasis is caused by a protozoan parasite that is transmitted by flies, and once in the human body it, does things that you really don't want to know. It starts with your spleen and/or liver swelling and ends, weeks later, in 95 percent of the cases where treatment is unavailable, in death caused by, well, it gets pretty ugly. The treatment isn't a walk in the park either, as the medications used to eradicate the parasite are toxic. If you are among those who survive the disease, and the treatment, you will suffer some side effects, most notably nasty lesions that start on the face and spread to the rest of the body, resembling leprosy and causing blindness when they erupt in your eyes.

So what does this have to do with dogs?

The disease is spread by sand flies, which carry the parasite from animal hosts to human victims. In some South American countries - Brazil, mostly - it is believed that the parasite likes to take up residence in domestic dogs. The parasite had been found in about 50 percent of the dogs tested in some Brazilian neighborhoods, Slate reported. The disease isn't prevalent in the United States because, well, it isn't. That's the explanation. It hasn't spread here because it isn't here. Experts say, though, that it is theoretically capable of spreading here, Slate reported, theoretically causing your internal organs to burst.

Now, in Brazil, they could treat the dogs and eliminate that source of the parasite. But as Slate reports, treating dogs for the disease is difficult. There is no way of knowing whether the parasite has been completely eliminated, according to Slate.

The only sure cure is to kill the dog.

Which is also problematic - and not just because dogs die.

A lot of the dogs that test positive for parasite do not show symptoms. And beyond that, those that don't show symptoms are unlikely to transmit the disease.

As Slate puts it:

"Now put yourself in the position of a Brazilian dog owner. You bring your cocker spaniel in for an ordinary checkup, and the vet tells you she has to euthanize and incinerate your ostensibly healthy dog because it might be carrying a disease that, at present, is unlikely to spread."

So do you try to stop the spread of a potentially fatal disease by killing dogs?

The answer depends, I guess.

You could say that one human life is worth an infinite number of dogs' lives, but again, it depends.

For the most part, dogs are pretty good to have around, except when they throw up on the living room rug, or poke your in-laws in the crotch with their noses, or jump on your head while you're trying to nap on the couch because they may have heard thunder from three states away.

A lot of humans, you just don't want them around.

So it's a relative thing, a sliding scale, if you will.

How many human lives is a dog worth?

Depends on the human.

And the dog.

Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.ydr.com/mike. Or follow him on Twitter at FnMikeArgento.